A seemingly endless cycle of extreme violence in lawless Somalia is having a ”catastrophic” effect on the war-shattered nation’s civilian population, the international charity Médécins sans Frontières (MSF) said on Monday.
At its two hospitals in the divided central town of Galkayo alone, it said it treated more than 500 people for violent trauma injuries in the first half of 2005, nearly three per day, most with gunshot wounds and many of them women and children.
”The frightening fact is that Somalia is officially not even at war,” Colin Mcllreavy, the MSF head of mission for Somalia, said in a statement released in Nairobi.
”This level of violence is simply a reflection of the brutality of everyday life for the people living in this country,” he said. ”Extreme violence has become a part of daily existence and the effect on the population is catastrophic.”
MSF said the situation in Galkayo — which is split between the rival Darod and Hawiye clans by a ”Green Line”, an unmarked strip of land — has forced it to run two hospitals there: one in the north and one in the south.
Between January and June, the two facilities treated 503 people for violent injuries: 397 of them in the north, it said.
Of those, 224 patients had gunshot wounds, 135 stab wounds and 38 had injuries due to other types of physical assaults.
In the south, 106 patients were treated for gunshot wounds in the first three months of the year, it said.
”We know for a fact that the already huge number of violence-related injuries we treat are just the tip of the iceberg,” Mcllreavy said, adding that continuing attacks limit both access to the hospitals and MSF’s work in Galkayo.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Somalia since 1991 when dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was toppled, plunging the Horn of Africa nation of up to 10-million into anarchy and chaotic clan warfare.
With no functioning central administration or organised medical care for the past 14 years, Somalia has ”some of the worst health indicators in the world”, MSF said, lamenting the lack of attention paid to the plight of ordinary Somalis.
”The suffering of the people of Somalia has received little attention from aid organisations and the international community,” it said, noting the country’s alarming child mortality rates.
More than 10% of Somali children die at birth and 25% of those who survive perish before their fifth birthday, it said. — Sapa-AFP